Photoshop Tutorial: How to create a tileable grass textures with the Pattern Filter

With the Photoshop pattern filter you can easily create seamlessly tileable textures and pattern based on a photo of your choice. I think the pattern filter is primary implemented to quickly create a lot of pattern for the internal pattern library. But we also can use the pattern filter to create high resolution textures for architectural visualizations.

Where is the pattern filter in my current Photoshop release?!

You can not find the pattern filter in your current Photoshop release? Do not panic! Note that nearly since Photoshop CS4 the pattern filter is not installed by default. Therefore you have to reinstall it if you can not find it under the „Filter“ menue.

Step 01: Selecting a basic photo for the Pattern Filter

After completed installation you will find the pattern filter here: Filter/Pattern Filter. The pattern filter works as follows: Select an area from your photo and Photoshop will create a seamlessly tileable texture or pattern on this basis by Photoshop pulls the photo to pieces and rearrage them to a new homogeneous pattern.

So first look for a nice basic photo. Make sure that the photos structure is not too irregular because the pattern maker works best with homogeneous images. In this tutorial we create a seamlessly tileable grass texture and therefore I chose following photo:

Step 02: Selection from the grass texture

Now we select an area from the grass texture – Photoshops basis for the pattern filter. Avoid selecting too dominant parts whith irregular structures like shadows or other interfering spots.

This is my selection. Now copy the selection to clipboard with Cmd+C (make sure the layer is active) and paste it into a new document with the size of the final texture. So open a new document and choose the new size (in my case 1024 px x 1024 px) for your texture.

Step 03: Creating a grass texture with the pattern filter

Afterwards paste the image of your clipboard by Cmd+V in the new document. Then go to filter/pattern filter and take a closer look to the interface of the pattern filter.

First I set the image size of my new texture to 1024 px x 1024 px and confirm the checkbox „use clipboard as sample“ because I want to use to part of the image I copied to my clipboard before. Optional you can also select an area in the preview window of the pattern filter. Next you can click on „Generate“ to come within striking distance of our final texture.

If you do not like the first result of the pattern maker you can just click on „Generate Again“to create a new random texture, but the difference is not that clear due to the homogeneous basic photo. By zooming in, you can check if the new arrangement of the image parts of the pattern maker are too dominant.

You can smooth the visible edges by increasing the values for „Sample Details“ and „Smootness“. If you like the result just click on OK and the texture will be rendered to your current layer in your Photoshop document.

Step 04: The final seamlessly tileable grass texture

Now we have a nice texture, but what about making it tileable? Thats already done! Why? If you select a document size of e.g. 256px x 256px oder 512px x 512px or like we did 1024px x 1024px etc. the pattern maker creates a seamlessly tileable texture by default.

Now some examples to show you the impact of the basic selection to the final result. A small selected area will create a more homogeneously texture compared to a larger selection. Here are three examples:

Which selection you choose depends on your project. But it is important to know that you can control the effect by selecting a smaller or larger area first.

You can download the final high resolution grass texture here for free: